White Water Rafting, Rock Climbing, and Lost Keys – Part 3

Finally, here’s part 3 of the Camping Adventure Trip Saga.  It’s the part you’ve all been waiting for… the story of the lost keys.

I mentioned in part 2 of the saga that we awoke on morning number 2 to the sound of my car alarm.  No one wanted to go through that again, so in my infinite wisdom, I decided to give my keys to the camp early bird, Bethany.  This way she could wake up as early as she wanted and the rest of us could sleep in.  My plan worked beautifully… sort of.

Bethany was not the only one to wake up early that next morning.  Vanessa got up early to make crepes for breakfast.  “Crepes on a camping trip?” you may be thinking.  So was I, but they were awesome.  Huge kudos to Vanessa for hitting a home run with the crepes.  It was pretty civilized fare for our outfit.

After breakfast we began to pack up camp.  As usual, the girls totally outdid the guys and had their stuff ready to go while us guys were still scratching our bellies and yawning (we were in a crepe coma).  As the guys got their stuff together, Vanessa and Sarah packed their car, said their goodbyes, and hit the road.  They had a date with a west coast road trip and were motivated to move.  After they left, the students and I packed up our SUV, tied tons of stuff to the top so we would all fit, got in the car, buckled our seat belts, then I said…

“Alright.  Behtany, hand me the keys.”

Bethany didn’t have the keys.  Neither did I or anyone else in the SUV.  As it turns out, she had given the keys to Vanessa so she could prepare breakfast.  At that moment, Vanessa was already an hour down the road on her way to Denver.  No problem… I could call her on my cell phone.

Oh wait, we were in a deep valley between two 14,000 feet tall peaks with no cell reception!  And my cell phone was dead.  No problem, I have a car charger… oh wait, a car charger only works when a car is turned on!  Arrrrgggghhhh!

Luckily, the camp host had a good old fashioned land based phone line.  I connected with Jodi in Branson and asked her to get a hold of Vanessa any way she could.  Cell phone, text message, smoke signal, carrier pigeon… whatever it took.

Not knowing if and when Vanessa would get our message, I decided to make the students hoof it to our next destination: a hot springs pool about three miles down the road.  They grabbed their swimming gear and their towels and we began our trek.  We kicked and tossed pine cones, stopped for a roadside nature break, sang songs, and spoke in silly accents on our hike down the hill. About halfway there, clouds began to roll in and rain began to sprinkle when I made the executive decision to hitchhike to the pool if we could.  How bad could it be, right?

After Zack and Stephen tried to run down several vehicles, one Isuzu Rodeo came to our rescue.  Our chauffeurs were two college-aged guys (one of them had a huge red afro – it was awesome) who gladly dropped us off at the hot springs. The students went in to swim and I was able to trade my gold teeth for use of the resort’s phone.  I quickly found out that Jodi eventually got in touch with Vanessa, who had nearly reached Denver.  Vanessa and Sarah had turned around and would reach us in a little over an hour.  Whew.  It was safe to breathe now.

The students and I had a great time at the hot springs (Mt. Princeton Hot Springs if you’re interested) playing Marco Polo, making up zany races, and just plain goofing off.  It was a great way to wind up the week.  Vanessa and Sarah did show up… what a sight for sore eyes.  Vanessa said she was driving like an “L.A. woman” to get there as quickly as she did.  As soon as they arrived, we changed into our dry clothes and got on the road.

The trip back to Branson was pretty uneventful, which was okay at that point.

We had an awesome week.  The planned adventures rocked.  The best lessons for me were learned in the midst of the unplanned… but isn’t that the way it always seems to happen?  I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Thanks for reading.   –Brad

White Water Rafting, Rock Climbing, and Lost Keys – Part 2

Day #3: The Waterfall and Rock Climbing

On the morning of Day 3, I woke up to one of the most wonderful sounds of nature – my car alarm. Apparently the camp earlybird (Bethany) tried to get out the cooler of food we had locked in the car the night before. That set of the car alarm, which sent me into a scramble to find the keys and hope that the remote would turn the alarm off without me having to get out of my tent. It did. Lucky me.

The Waterfall

By the time the guys and I finally got up, Abby, Bethany, and Mariah had gone on a hike to scout out the waterfall we could see from our campsite. The boys and Vanessa and Sarah somehow stumbled out of bed and had breakfast while out fearless outdoorswomen were busy exploring the great outdoors.

The explorers returned and we all went on a hike to the waterfall. All of us, that is, except Vanessa, who decided to stay at camp and read and try to nap on a tree that hung over the “creek.” The waterfallers hiked up to the waterfall in short order to find that the waterfall was much larger than it looked from our campsite. Everyone but me took off their shoes and climbed onto a cool rock while I took some a few awesome pictures and video. After that, Zach and myself climbed up to the base of the waterfall, took off our shirts, and took an icy shower. We returned from our hike with just enough time to have lunch and head to Granite, CO for some rock climbing.

Video of the Amazing Waterfall

There’s Nobody Here…

As we began our drive to the rock climbing outfitter, I quickly realized that I didn’t have directions. Not a problem… I just called the place and was told to look for a place a few miles outside of Buena Vista on the left side of the road with a sign and several buses. As I turned into the parking lot with lots of Arkansas Valley Adventure busses, we all began to feel like we were in the middle of an old western. No one was there. There were several buildings, a few cabins with dogs tied up on the porch (I’m not kidding), lots of adventure gear (rafts, climbing stuff, mountain bikes) but no people. I called the outfitter again and told them that no one was there. After a few more minutes in the adventure ghost town, a car drove up and told us we were at the gear storage location… the main offices were another quarter mile up the road.

Time to Climb

Once we were at the right place, we got fitted with rock climbing gear. We all got helmets (which were way cool), harnesses (which looked very funny), and rock climbing shoes (which fit way tighter than normal shoes). Our climbing guides Cheyenne (a guy) and Jamie (a girl – you gotta love gender neutral names) taught us the finer points of climbing and belaying and let us have some fun on a 40 foot high slab of granite with 3 different climbing routes. Several of us even took up our guides offer to let us “free fall”… the guides gave us about 10 feet of slack in our lines as we jumped backwards away from the rock. That was a rush. (those crazy jumps are in the second video below).

There are so many amazing spiritual tie-ins with rock climbing, and most of them revolve around trust. Solo rock climbing is pretty dumb in that it’s one of the most dangerous activities I can imagine (swimming with hungry sharks has to take the cake), but climbing with a partner, proper gear, and using basic safety techniques makes rock climbing safer than crossing the street in Branson. Even with the boatloads of safety, there is an element of fear involved, and facing that fear is a bigger challenge for most new climbers than the physical challenge. As we follow Jesus, the most amazing parts of the journey involve risk, overcoming fear, and trusting Jesus. I could go on and on about how amazing climbing is, but tons of books have already been written about it. So here are a couple of video clips of our afternoon.

Rock Climbing Highlights – Part 1 (about 10 minutes long)

Rock Climbing Highlights – Part 2 (about 4 minutes long)

Don’t worry, the story about the lost keys is coming in Part 3 of this post in a few days.

Whitewater Rafting, Rock Climbing, and Lost Keys – Part 1

The 2008 Summer Adventure Camping Trip is in the history books.

Yes, you read the title right, there were lost keys involved in our mega-adventure trip. But for those details, you’ll just have to wait until the end of this write-up! Nothing like keeping your audience waiting.

Night #1: The Arrival

With about an hour of sunlight left, we arrived at the Noah’s Ark Rafting base camp in Buena Vista, Colorado (actually, Noah’s Ark base camp is located in the tiny town of Nathrop). We hustled to get tents up and some food in our bellies. Then I began to wonder about building a fire and I realized that I forgot newspaper! How do you start a fire without newspaper?!? How would we survive? Before I finished even thinking those thoughts and trying to figure out which dumpster to pilfer for some newspaper, I looked behind and Mariah and Abby had the fire started! They used weeds and pine needles as kindling and saved the evening. They are awesome outdoorswomen.

Later that evening, we were invited to join a college Young Life group from Phoenix for some fireside worship. It was awesome for our teens to see some college kids enjoying God and sharing their lives with one another.

Day # 2: Whitewater Rafting

I awoke to find everyone else already up and at ’em (a pattern that would hold true for the rest of the trip). Abby, Bethany and Mariah had the morning fire raging. After a breakfast of eggs (scrambled inside of ziploc baggies – a trick I learned from my nephew), we packed up camp and headed up to get on our penguin suits, um I mean rafting gear.

We all had wetsuits on, so there was no room for anyone to feel silly by themselves… we all looked ridiculous. (Oh yeah, I forgot my digital camera for the trip… there are relatively few pictures… tons of video, but only a few pictures. Mariah, Sarah, and Vanessa had cameras, so hopefully they email me pictures soon!)

The Arkansas River was awesome! Water levels were at record highs. In fact, several other sections of the river had been closed by the State of Colorado because they were too dangerous. In the 10 mile section we rafted, the water ran high, fast and cold. Zack, Stephen, Vanessa and Sarah were in one raft and Abby, Bethany, Mariah, and myself were in another raft. The people seated in the front of each raft got soaked, and the people sitting in the back got seriously bumped around. I was so grateful we had our penguin wetsuits.

These pictures were taken in the “Zoom Flume”, one of the best rapids on the trip. “The Seven Steps” was another favorite rapid.

At one calm point in the trip, we were told we could go swimming if we wanted. For some insane reason known only to God himself, Mariah, Bethany, Zack, Stephen, and I all decided to willingly jump into the 42-degree water (yes, that’s only 10 degrees above freezing). It was amazing to see how quickly everyone got back into their rafts.

The only casualty of the rafting trip was Stephen’s hat. We all took a moment of silence to commemorate his loss.

After the rafting, we somehow squeezed out of our penguin suits and headed up to the Chalk Creek Campground in the San Isabel National Forest, our basecamp home for the next two days. This campground was right on Chalk Creek (which was the biggest “creek” I’ve ever seen) was nestled right between Mt. Princeton (go Tigers!) and Mt. Antero, two 14,000 foot mountains. The roar of the creek was wonderful music to fall asleep to (much better than the train whistles in Branson).

Day 3# will be continued in part 2 of this post.